Why mitigating CO2 emissions is cost-ineffective

A couple of weeks ago I appeared before the California State Assembly and told legislators that the cost of the State’s cap-and-trade legislation, which comes into full effect in August this year, will be $450 billion over a decade.

This was a deliberate underestimate. I bent over backward to see whether the Californian proposal could ever make any economic sense. The results, when I ran them through my simple model, confirmed what many have long suspected but few have calculated until now: that attempting to mitigate our sins of emission is one of the most cost-ineffective wastes of taxpayers’ money ever devised.

I had multiplied the $182-billion annual cost of California’s scheme and associated mitigation measures not by 10 but by 2.5 – a quarter of the true gross cost over a decade. The reason for effectively dividing the stated costs of California’s mitigation policies by four is that some had criticized the paper from which I obtained the $182 billion annual cost – Varshney & Tootelian, 2012 – for overstating the costs.

I should really have applied a minimum intertemporal discount rate of at least 5%, which would bring the cost down to $410 billion. In the updated figures I present in this posting, I have correctly applied that discount rate.

My model is simple and excludes costs and benefits external to CO2 mitigation: however, unlike other methods reported in the literature, it does count as a benefit of mitigation the cost of the climate-related damage caused by the warming that would occur if we did not act at once on CO2.

On the benefit side of the account, too, I have bent over backwards to try to be generous to those proposing mitigation measures. I have taken the generally exaggerated estimates of the welfare loss from climate inaction that are in the Stern report on the economics of climate change.

Briefly, Stern says that if the manmade warming of the 20th century is the 3 Celsius degrees (or 6 F°) that is the IPCC’s central projection the cost of the climate-related damage will be 0-3% of 21st-century GDP (actually, he says, “now and forever”, but that is not economic analysis: it is political rodomontade: as Margaret Thatcher might have said, “Don’t be silly, dear!”).

So the mean cost of the welfare loss estimated by Stern on the basis of 3 C° total manmade 21st-century warming is the average of 0 and 3%, i.e. 1.5%, of 21st-century GDP. This too should be discounted at 5% over the ten-year life of the scheme, giving a benefit of just 1.27% of GDP over the period.

Now, given the errors, exaggerations, and failures of prediction in the IPCC’s documents, I do not for a moment think we are going to see anything like as much as 3 C° of manmade warming by 2100. Even the IPCC expects only half of that, or 1.5 C°, to occur by 2100 as a result of the CO2 that we emit in this century. Yet it is only that 1.5 C° that CO2 mitigation measures such as those in California can possibly affect to any discernible extent.

That 1.5 C° is the maximum 21st-century warming that we could have prevented even if we had shut down all CO2 emissions in the year 2000. The remaining 1.5 C° – about half of it from non-CO2 greenhouse gases and half from warming already in the pipeline because of our past emissions – will happen regardless of measures such as those which California is trying to take.

On that basis, one should really halve the benefit that arises from preventing Stern’s mean 1.27%-of-GDP inaction cost. But let us – again generously – stick with a benefit equivalent to 1.27% of GDP if we prevent all CO2-driven warming in the 21st century.

Should the model take account of the possibility that California’s cap-and-trade scheme will create opportunities for job growth? I think not. The Friedman Multiple applies: every job artificially created via taxation destroys two jobs among the taxpaying classes: and, according to a recent Scottish report, each “green job” provided at taxpayers’ expense destroys getting on for five real jobs elsewhere.

Why has Intel said it will never again build another plant in California? Why has production of oil from the Monterey Shale been cut by more than a third since 1990, though proven reserves have increased? Why has there been a near-total moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling in California for nigh on 40 years?

Why are there 11% jobless in California – a higher proportion than anywhere in the US except Nevada? Why are 50% unemployed in the construction industry that is supposed to benefit from retrofitting buildings with “green” technology?

Why does the State Treasury have a deficit of $6 billion for 2012/13? Why does California have unfunded pension liabilities of $250-200 billion to its senior citizens, and how is it going to pay for them if it goes on as it is?

Why have 50,000 high-net-worth Californians (one-third of the total) fled in just two years, according to the Sacramento Bee? Why did twice as many firms flee California in 2011 as in 2010? Why did Globalstar, Trizetto and eEye flee in just one month last year? Why have Boeing, Toyota, Apple, Facebook, DirecTV, Hilton Hotels, and Thomas Bros. Maps all fled?

It would be wrong to imply that these decisions to flee were a direct result of California’s cap-and-trade law, and I did not do so. The truth is that California – long dominated by entrenched, hard-Left unions and a frankly Marxist legislature – is already notorious as far and away the least business-friendly State in the Union. Cap-and-trade will merely make matters a great deal worse. The wagons are already rolling eastward: soon they will become a stampede.

When I testified in Sacramento, the first point I put to the legislators was that the declared aim of their cap-and-trade scheme is to abate 25% of California’s CO2 emissions over the decade during which it will run. But California’s emissions are only 8% of total US emissions, which in turn are only 17% of global emissions.

So, even if the cap-and-trade scheme is every bit as successful as its promoters would wish, only 0.34% of global emissions – one-third of one per cent – will be abated. There is nothing in the least controversial about this figure, except that no one seems to have pointed it out before. The legislators’ faces were a picture when I told them.

Because so small a fraction of global emissions will be abated by the scheme, simple calculations based on the IPCC’s central assumptions about how much warming will occur this century (which, for the sake of argument, I simply accepted as correct) show that as a result of the full and successful operation of the scheme global CO2 concentration will fall from 410 to – er – 409.93 parts per million by volume by the end of the decade.

Manmade radiative forcing abated would thus be less than 0.001 Watts per square meter, and the warming prevented would be – wait for it, wait for it – a staggering 0.001 Fahrenheit degrees (almost). Yup, less than one-thousandth of a Fahrenheit degree of global warming prevented, at a cost of $410 billion even after discounting to present value.

Is that a bargain for the already over-taxed, over-regulated citizenry of California? We report – you decide.

It is important to understand why measures to attempt to mitigate CO2 emissions are always going to be unaffordable. First, as the California example demonstrates, regional mitigation measures do not noticeably change the global CO2 concentration. Therefore manmade radiative forcing is scarcely altered.

So, in turn, California’s attempt to stop global warming will cause so tiny a cooling – in the present instance, under one-thousandth of a Fahrenheit degree – that no modern instrument or method can detect it. Even if California’s scheme succeeded in cutting as much as 25% of the State’s emissions (which it won’t), the State would have no way of measuring that it had succeeded in causing global cooling.

You might say, as some commentators on my presentation to the California legislators have said, that of course California cannot make much difference by going it alone. Everyone else must follow California’s leadership in closing down as much of their economies as possible. So let us cost that unattractive option.

A little further elementary math will show that the cost of abating 1 Fahrenheit degree of global warming by worldwide measures as spectacularly cost-ineffective as those of California will be close to $640 trillion – rather more than the $454 trillion I had originally estimated, because I had been too generous with the value of the centennial-scale climate-sensitivity parameter.

Its value should not exceed 0.4 Kelvin per Watt per square meter, whereas I had generously adopted the bicentennial-scale parameter at 0.5 Kelvin per Watt per square meter that is implicit in IPCC (2007), p. 13, Table SPM.3.

To put all of this in context, the cost of abating the one-third of a Fahrenheit degree of warming that the IPCC imagines will happen over the decade of the scheme, if everyone worldwide were crazy enough to adopt measures as laughably cost-ineffective as these, would be $25,000 per head of the world population, or one-third of global GDP over a decade. This would be 26 times the cost enduring the welfare loss that might arise from the global warming we fail to prevent if we do nothing.

I deliberately used very cautious assumptions in my presentation to the Assembly in Sacramento, and told the legislators that action would only cost 11 times inaction.

For various reasons, I should expect the cost-ineffectiveness of California’s scheme (which is by no means untypical of such schemes) to be considerably worse than any of the figures I have cited above.

For a start, it is not at all likely that the scheme will succeed in abating 25% of California’s emissions. The EU and New Zealand schemes have failed to make any noticeable dent in emissions, and the EU scheme – for the fourth successive time – is collapsing as the cost of the right to emit a ton of CO2 has fallen below $8. It nosedived yet again earlier this week, and – if things go on as they are – could end up like the now-failed Chicago Carbon Exchange, where the unit price fell below 10 cents.

The EU’s dictators, of course, have the power artificially to cut the quantity of permits available and so boost the price. That is why cap-and-trade is not, repeat not, a market mechanism. It is a tyrant’s wet dream and a businessman’s nightmare, which is why heavily-emitting businesses are getting out of Europe, just as they will soon be joining the flood of businesses already fleeing California.

For these and many other reasons, my model actually tends to overstate the warming that any CO2-reduction policy may abate, and also to understate cost-ineffectiveness. For instance, the IPCC takes CO2’s mean atmospheric residence time as 50-200 years: if so, little mitigation will occur within the 21st century.

Also, my numbers assume that any policy-driven reduction in CO2 concentration occurs at once, when it would be likely to occur stepwise between the starting and ending years, halving the warming otherwise abated by that year and doubling the cost-ineffectiveness.

If the IPCC’s central projections (on which my figures are based) continue to exaggerate the warming that may arise from a given increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, the cost-effectiveness may be less than shown.

So far, there has been no global warming at all since 2001. In fact, on the latest data from the Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, there has been no statistically-significant warming for fully 15 years.

Of course, such periods of temperature stasis are quite frequent in the record. They do not imply there will be no further warming. But they do constrain the rate of warming, which has been and remains far too slow to come close to the IPCC’s unjustifiably alarmist central estimate.

Also, though CO2 emissions are rising in accordance with the IPCC’s A2 emissions scenario, CO2 concentration growth has been near-linear for a decade. Outturn by 2100 may well be considerably below the IPCC’s mean estimate of 700 ppmv.

The climate-sensitivity parameter that I use is centennial-scale: accordingly, over the shorter periods covered by the studies a lesser coefficient (allowing for the fact that longer-term temperature feedbacks may not yet have acted) is appropriate. Consequently, less warming abated would again reduce mitigation cost-effectiveness.

Finally, my calculations ignore all opportunity losses from diverting resources to global-warming mitigation. However, the businesses that are already fleeing the business-hating People’s Republic of California cannot afford to ignore such vital considerations. That is why any individual and any firm in California with any get-up-and-go is getting up and going or has already gotten up and gone.

The figures I have cited here are a deliberately much-simplified but nevertheless highly revealing method of combining the central climatological projections of the IPCC with the standard economic techniques of intertemporal analysis so as to allow even non-specialist policy-makers rapidly to reach a not unreliable first approximation of the costs and benefits of policies to mitigate CO2 emissions.

My method is unique in two respects. First, no one has previously combined the IPCC’s climatology with economic methods so straightforwardly before. Secondly, the method, for the first time, allows even localized policies to be evaluated and compared with competing policies on any scale.

If anyone would like a copy of the paper that explains the method and justifies the equations, please get in touch. (monckton at mail dot com) I’ll be happy to send it to you, and I’ll welcome your comments. I can’t post it up because, after I presented these ideas at the Third Santa Fe Climate Conference in November last year, I have been asked to submit the paper to a learned journal and the final draft is just about to go out to the reviewers.

One of my Noble Friends tells me he has sent the analysis to the chief economic adviser to the UK Treasury, which, however, cannot do much about it because all British environmental policy is now set by the unelected Kommissars of Brussels. His message to the mandarins: “As they say on the London insurance market, ‘When the premium exceeds the cost of the risk, don’t insure.’”

Since the opportunity cost of mitigation is heavy (just watch all those wagons rollin’ away from the extravagantly pointless over-regulation and over-taxation in California), the question arises whether CO2 mitigation should be attempted at all.

Economically speaking, the bottom line is brutally simple and entirely clear. CO2 mitigation policies inexpensive enough to be affordable are likely to prove ineffective, while policies costly enough to be effective will be unaffordable.

116 thoughts on “Why mitigating CO2 emissions is cost-ineffective”

But…but…but…. How will we pay for our bullet train? (There is an AP story out this morning on proposals to use CA’s cap and trade income for this purpose. I had just mentioned it in Tips and Notes, when this essay came up.)
They’re all ready to spend the money

The “watermelons” are holding a gun to California taxpayers. But drunk on the religion of “global warming”, they’d rather be pious and pentulant than sober and sane.
Sad to see a once-great state go under.

The EU wants to have a trade war over their ETS, which might be exactely the right stimulus for the new B-747 to make a comeback against the A-380.
Does anyone have a idea about how big the influence of ETS on world temperature is supposed to be?

express amusement:Stripping CO2 from air requires largest industry ever http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428593.800-stripping-co2-from-air-requires-largest-industry-ever.html
Colin Axon of Brunel University in Uxbridge, UK, and Alex Lubansky at the University of Oxford estimated what it would take to remove the 30 gigatonnes of CO2 we emit every year.
That would mean processing 75,000 Gt of dry air. Scaling up proposals to filter air would use 180 Gt of clean water per year, depriving 53 million people of water, on top of the 66 per cent of the world’s population who will face water shortages by 2025.
Enhancing rock weathering is no better. It would call for 100 Gt of olivine, a common mineral. This is 12,500 times more than is produced worldwide. To deal with 30 Gt of CO2 we would need to spread the olivine 1 centimetre thick over 3.6 billion square kilometres of dry land, 1000 times more than Earth has available.

As an English man living in SoCal I applaud Lord Monckton for his efforts ……BUT I am sorry to say that “THEY” will soundly ignore him as”THEY” are to far gone towards the MADNESS of the left, what is sooooooooo…..sad is the people of California are WONDRFUL and should be better treated by politicians !!!!!!!! ….

I think Lord Monckton’s analysis spells out what most of us thought was intuitively obvious. It is not really surprising to see the economic stupidity of carbon mitigation presented so clearly. There is one statement however, where I believe he is mistaken:
“Even if California’s scheme succeeded in cutting as much as 25% of the State’s emissions (which it won’t)…”
I think California is well on its way to exceeding a 25% reduction in emissions by inadvertently producing a 40% reduction in its viable businesses and a 30-35% reduction in its population. This will also result in a very large decrease in California tax revenue and a spiraling deficit that will make Greece look like an economic safe haven! There will be much misery and gnashing of teeth, but at least they will have reduced their emissions by 25% or more, achieving absolutely nothing in the way of climate control.
It is a small price to pay for the possibility of a commemorative plaque in the Socialist Hall of Fame. /sarc

CO2 emission cost/benefit analysis never seem to add in the benefit side. My amateur greenhouse runs 1400ppm CO2. My greenhouse plants double growth and use far less water. At 700ppm CO2, a 25% increase in California’s agricultural output would be easy. We are expecting 10 billion people for dinner soon. If we don’t get ready to feed them, we are going to have to shoot them.

We won’t get rid of this wretched nonsense until we absorb the fact that SURFACE TENSION blocks heat transfer.
Wow, you’ve taken a lucid discussion and left me — speechless.
First of all, I have no idea what this even means. Surface tension blocks heat transfer how, exactly? Since surface tension exists in almost any fluid interface with a meniscus, I guess that means that fluids never change temperature, right? Or do you mean “fluid-fluid interfaces with surface tension can have a different conductivity across the interface than they do in the bulk medium on either side”, which is quite possibly true but fails to show that the conductivity is always lower or significantly lower, relevantly lower.
Or perhaps you are referring to the transmission and reflection coefficient from the boundary between two dielectrics and radiative cooling? Again, true — hell, I can derive that truth and have in my online E&M textbook — but this is relevant how?
The relevant part of heat transfer is the transfer from the Earth’s surface (and lower atmosphere) to outgoing radiation, which must match, on average, the transfer from the Sun’s surface to the Earth’s surface (and lower atmosphere). Where I’m not neglecting the upper atmosphere, but its dynamics and heat capacity are such as to make exosphere or thermosphere phenomena not obviously relevant once again. The thing that “blocks heat transfer” (or enables it) down low is a mix of conduction, convection, and radiation phenomena, one important component of which is CO_2. Monckton openly acknowledges that CO_2 is a greenhouse gas, that greenhouse warming is an important contributor to global mean temperatures in the energy balance differential equations, and that humans have contributed to increases in CO_2 concentration in the atmosphere, because all of these things are true — experimentally and empirically confirmed facts. So do all reasonable skeptics familiar with the science and evidence, including myself.
His point is (correctly) that the cost of doing anything about it at taxpayer or legally enforced corporate expense is greater than any possible benefit when compared to the cost of doing nothing, even assuming that the worst-case assumptions of CAGW warmists are true! Which almost certainly are not, in fact true. One could then add the latter arguments to the case, that the real costs are almost certainly going to be far lower than those trumpeted by the alarmists, and that furthermore, there may well be benefits (like staving off the next ice age for a bit — hmmm, wonder what the marginal benefit of that might be given that a sudden onset of catastrophic cooling back to ice age conditions could kill off a significant fraction of humanity, numerous species, and increase the probability of nuclear encounters that could end civilization as we known it along with the temperate and benign conditions that have nurtured the development of human civilization over the last 10,000 years).
Now, I’m all for improving climate science. For example, I agitate on these pages for a careful analysis of the direct impact one should expect on the Earth’s mean global temperature associated with the 6% increase in bond albedo empirically observed in the Earth’s reflected earthlight falling on the dark side of the moon by NASA over the last 15 years (down from the global minimum of albedo across the period where we had the means to measure it at all, which occurred back during the grand solar maximum of the latter 20th century). Albedo modulation, whatever the cause, is a directly observable phenomenon with the soundest of physics to connect it to mean global temperature modulation, and the latter predicts that the Earth’s global mean temperature should decrease by roughly 2K over the next couple of decades — the flattening of the Earth’s temperature over the last decade plus may well be the first visible precursor of this decrease.
So please, if there is important physics being left out, some way that “surface tension” between two immiscible fluids “blocks heat transfer” in a way that is relevant to the Earth’s radiative energy balance, by all means enlighten me (and the rest of us), ideally with peer reviewed publications or a sound and complete description of the physics and at least order of magnitude estimates of the expected effect. Otherwise, a remark like this simply encourages the dismissal of the entire skeptical position. Whether or not it is sound reason or justified, accompanying good arguments with terrible ones causes third parties to decrease degree of belief and respect accorded to the good ones if they are associated with the bad ones in some proximate way.
rgb

“action would only cost 11 times inaction”
If one takes into account that ‘feelings’ are the greatest motivator for the Environmental Eco-Alarmists’ religion, the expenditure involved may be 11 times the cost of inaction, but it makes them ‘feel’ 11 times better. To the true believers, that would still be a bargain at twice the price.

@jim, @mushroomgeorge
You can’t add billions of people to the world population, because we are in a test tube.
Look up scientist David Suzuki’s analysis of the situation.
We are even now headed for a massive catastrophe in human population,
ecological disaster, a mass extinction event in the oceans within 50 years

The kicker is that the Stern Report is 180° wrong. If the man-made warming of the 21st Century (this one) is 3° C, that unlikely outcome would increase global GDP a good 10% over what it would have been (will be) otherwise. Global warming is not something to mitigate but to encourage.
If the unlikely happens and the globe warms, it will increase rainfall, growing seasons, agricultural success and output, health, welfare, goodness, and happiness.
Note that the warmest place in California, the Imperial Valley, is the most productive farmland in that state.
Note that most of the human population on this planet lives in warm climes, the tropics and semitropics. We like it warm.
Note that biodiversity (number of species per hectare) is greatest in equatorial regions and least in polar ones; the gradient follows latitude. Plants and animals prefer it warm.
The California Plan will not only cost an unimaginable fortune and accomplish nothing but massive impoverishment, it is wrong-headed from the get go.
WARMER IS BETTER.

The real question “why” regarding anything Monckton presents is “Why anyone would believe him?”
He is not a scientist.
He lies and makes up fax to fit his political agenda.
2. His so-called work has been thoroughly debunked a realclimate.org.

juanslayton says:
April 4, 2012 at 8:40 am
But…but…but…. How will we pay for our bullet train?
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I doubt ecol-gists will ever allow the rail to be laid…they will hold it up in courts for decades…. And I’m pretty sure the California Governor knows this. The political promise is a pea shuffle.

That was supposed to be “facts ” to fit his political agenda.
People don’t usually hire a dishwasher salesman to fix the plumbing problems in there home. But that is just what climate science deniers are doing when they hire Monckton instead of a real scientist.
Check the facts here from real scientists who are trained in climate science:http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/08/monckton-makes-it-up/

Jim says:
April 4, 2012 at 9:43 am
But doesn’t all this leave out population growth? If we add a billion people to the planet every 20 years what does that do to co2 increases?
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Who knows?
But we DO know innovation and technology doesn’t stand still….And that is left from most debates about population growth. 🙂

“The legislators’ faces were a picture when I told them.”
I am sure. But as the majority of them are hardcore Marxists, the minds(?) behind those faces were surely thinking “Yes, we will have to go global with this in order to make a difference”.
Both predictable and pathetic. I vote we let the Mexico take California back 😉 (Sorry Anthony)

The level of ignorance of science of this site is shocking.
Mike D.:
To state that global warming is not happening is pure ignorance, as the scientific measurements have demonstrated it is so..
!
Even the oil companies, who have a vested interest in fossil fuel production agreeREPLY: For readers that want to see a “level of ignorance” on science on a website, I heartily suggest visiting Tim’s which he provided a link for in his name: http://timmantyla.wordpress.com/
It is really quite a mishmashed mind bender. This one is rather fun: http://timmantyla.wordpress.com/tag/mental-ability/ – Anthony

Lord Monckton simply explains why the true objectives behind the CO2 mitigation is a totalitrian wet dream. And that’s why no reasonable argument will be accepted.
We’re killing the evil USA you know and nobody is going to stop us.

@kim2ooo
Your laughter is silly here, it’s clear you fail to check the facts. It is obvious that you are no scientist either, and have no respect for science.
There is no technology that can re mediate the number of people polluting and destroying in the billions and billions as the population rises exponentially.
The green revolution of the seventy’s has already happened and increased the population not nearly fed those billion.
REMINDER to commenters: Don’t feed the trolls, but do visit http://timmantyla.wordpress.com/ for a good laugh…. brains….BRAINS!

@Tim Mantyla
By your logic we should not listen to you, because you are not a scientist. (And if you are, I think it’s safe to safe you’re a fairly bad one.)
Way to ignore everything Lord Monckton said, and attack him personally. Kudos.
Who here would love to see another thorough smackdown of Tim Mantalys comments by the good Lord Monckton? Aside from his excellent essay on California’s desire to bankrupt themselves, the chance to shut down this troll’s asinine comments should be too good to pass up.

Tim Mantyla says:
April 4, 2012 at 10:09 am
@jim, @mushroomgeorge
You can’t add billions of people to the world population, because we are in a test tube.
Look up scientist David Suzuki’s analysis of the situation.
You have got to be kidding. Apparently not. Wow .Can I ask you one question,
It is well recognized the CO2 levels have gone up >5% in the past decade and yet the global temperature has not (this according to the HADCRU data, so please explain this discrepency. Either CO2 is the driver or it is not. Sorry not both ways arguments are accepted here.

MODERATOR: REMINDER to commenters: Don’t feed the trolls, but do visit http://timmantyla.wordpress.com/ for a good laugh…. brains….BRAINS!
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But he told me not to go to a dishwasher repairman for plumbing help…But sent me to a fruit-fly scientist for AGW 🙂 🙂
O’kay I’ll be good 😉

Dear Tim,
Calm down, son. A warming earth is nothing to fear. It is a GOOD thing.
I understand your problem. You have been inundated by paranoia perpetrated by the Goreans and their global authoritarian hegemonist manipulations. You have been taught to fear warmth.
It isn’t a natural thing. People prefer it warmer. That’s why most people live in warm climes, and those who don’t heat their shelters and wear thick clothing outdoors. It really has been quite a feat of propaganda to convince so many to believe something contrary to their own gut instincts, that a colder globe is preferable.
Don’t drink their Kool Aid. Trust your own instincts and sensibilities. Don’t be a tool. Embrace your true nature and life itself. Be warm.

Tim Mantyla, if California’s politicians truly believe that carbon dioxide concentrations above 1990 levels represent a serious danger to the planet, then their actions need to reflect their words, and they should promptly enact a carbon reduction action plan with real teeth in it, one which directly rations energy consumption within the state as necessary to quickly reach California’s own 1990 carbon emission figures. Anything less than that is simply pandering to the environmental community for votes.

So basically, this entire analysis based on the Varshney & Tootelian report (which was 2009 not 2012). If you read the actual report it estimates the total loss to California GDP of AB32 at $402 billion annually, or some 20% of GDP (at that point, who’s counting?) and some 15% of all of the jobs in the state. They make it sound like AB32 is the legislative equivalent of the alien attack on L.A. in Independence Day. It’s amusing but it totally lacks any kind of credibility which is why it was torn apart by real economists. The whole report is based on a phony IMPLAN analysis which is the same econometric program people use to prove that building a sports stadium or shopping mall will create thousands of jobs and generate millions of tax dollars. Usually those reports are only worth the paper they are printed on, if not less.

Another pesky little fact. according to the world experts on ice the global average ice coverage is actually +0.16 thousand sq. kilometers. (Arctic -0.3, Antarctic +0.46).
See the Sea Ice reference for the data, if you have doubts about the data.http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
Any answers come to mind Tim?

Reading this and other Lord M cost benefit analyses leads to the conclusion that another extension of the work is needed. In this extension we need simulations of the costs of fighting the policy fire or throwing gasoline on it with the argument that the mitigation targets are too low. Turning science skeptics and policy advisers from firefighters and rescuers of reason to gasoline throwers might save money in the end by helping to wreck the whole effort at an earlier stage when the unions and other Marxist backers of legislative savants see direct conflict with their own goals of carving up the budget and debt capacity for themselves. For that to happen the budget fire needs to be so huge that the private sector no longer matters and only public sector and CO2 mitigators are left to fight it out. I think we can guess which side would win that fight. After all, how many Prius tires need to slashed by unions and daily union threats need to be issued to get the nonprofit advocacy leaders attention?

In reply to Mantyla,
Do you have a logical comment concerning the subject of this thread? Do not try to change the subject.
Monckton’s summary is based on facts which are from the IPCC and the state of California.
California is wasting billions on wind farms, solar stations and other AGW schemes which will result in no significant reduction in CO2 emissions. Even if the schemes which are scams did reduce Californian CO2 emissions by the fantasy amount, the net change in planetary temperature, assuming the IPCC incorrect science was correct, is not possible to measure.
I notice Realclimate is completely silent on details concerning the means, the costs, and impact on the economy of the scams to reduce carbon dioxide emission.
China is placing one large coal fired plant into service every week. The Chinese CO2 emissions are now roughly 40% greater than the US. India and China have stated there CO2 emissions will continue to increase. I notice Realclimate is silent on CO2 emissions by country also.

For a rental 24 foot moving truck, the difference between moving from Houston TX to LA CA and the reverse, is about $700. This reflects the cost of flying a rental company employee to Texas to retrieve the empty truck.

Tim Mantyla –
RealClimate? Hilarious. I think most of us have been to RC, some of us more than once. Most people I know won’t go there anymore, we don’t like supporting well coordinated AGW industry funded disinformation campaigns.

Once again, many thanks to those commenters who have made constructive points. Ed Caryl’s real-world evidence that the cost of hiring a 24ft removal truck to go from CA to TX is $700 greater than the cost of going the other way confirms that the wagons are indeed rolling eastward out of California to escape the crippling cost of its loony-Left over-taxation and over-regulation.
One or two commenters have taken me to task for relying on the Varshney and Tootelian report of 2009 (not 2012, as I had mistakenly written). However, as I pointed out in the posting, I had taken not their high-end annual cost of cap-and-trade and related anti-CO2 measures ($402 billion) but the direct annual cost only ($182 billion), and I had multiplied it not by 10 for a full decade but only by 2.5, effectively dividing the direct cost by four. I had deliberately erred on the side of caution, here as elsewhere throughout the analysis.
It is worth summarizing why it is that any attempt to mitigate CO2 emissions is likely to be cost-ineffective. First, any individual scheme will make only a minuscule difference to CO2 concentration; therefore the reduction in radiative forcing will be barely measurable; therefore the consequent global cooling, compared with business as usual, will be unmeasurable by any modern instrument or method. Upscaling an individual scheme globally merely increases the costs more or less in line with the upscaling. Economies of scale do not seem to apply: for instance, the cost of windmills, per MWh generated, is higher than ever at present.
Bottom line: whichever way you stack the numbers, preventing warmer weather is many times costlier than letting it happen and paying the cost of adapting to it in a focused way.
A troll says I am not a scientist. No, but – as regular readers of Anthony’s award-winning blog will know – I am an experienced policy analyst, and I used to conduct intertemporal investment appraisals for HM Government, using the first computer ever to find its way into 10 Downing Street. Besides, the rule at this blog – which is a good one – is that one should attack the argument and not the man. Aristotle pointed out 2300 years ago, in his Sophistical Refutations, that attacking the man with mere non-specific yah-boo points, rather than debating him on the arguments he has presented, is one of the dozen commonest and stupidest logical fallacies in human discourse.
The same troll (I shall forbear to discuss the question whether he is a scientist) says global population is rising “exponentially”. No, it isn’t. Populations don’t do that. They follow not an exponential curve but an epidemic curve. The curve is S-shaped. At first, the population grows very slowly: then it grows very rapidly, mimicking an exponential curve. Finally and inevitably, however, population growth slows and eventually tails off. As recently as 2000, the UN’s fatuous “population clock” predicted that there would be 16 billion of us one day. Now, however, the UN’s estimate of the population peak is 9-10 billion, compared with 7 billion now: not exactly an insuperable problem, particularly as people seem to like cramming themselves into cities rather than sprawling all over the countryside. The UN has at last understood that the population curve is not, repeat not, exponential.
Paradoxically, the one course of action that might lead to a population increase well above the UN’s current prediction would be to make everyone poorer by banning the use of fossil fuels such as coal. Overwhelming demographic evidence demonstrates that the surest and quickest way to stabilize population growth rates at replacement level is to raise the standard of living above the poverty line. Though the Left (those who know this is the case) usually maintain that the stabilization occurs because more wealth means better education for women, in practice this factor is almost entirely irrelevant as far as rates of population growth are concerned.
Another bottom line: if we want to minimize the total environmental footprint of Man by bringing down the global population growth rate to replacement level, we need to raise standards of living worldwide. And the cheapest and most effective way to do that is to give affordable, fossil-fueled electricity to those who don’t have it yet. For this reason, the biggest threat to the Earth’s environment is environmentalists.

I quote: “…there has been no global warming at all since 2001. In fact, on the latest data from the Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, there has been no statistically-significant warming for fully 15 years. Of course, such periods of temperature stasis are quite frequent in the record….”
It is not accurate to say that such temperature stases are quite frequent but they do exist in the record. The satellite record that starts in 1979 shows two of them: the present standstill starting in 2002, and a temperature standstill from 1979 to 1997. What you see in satellite data for these years is a series of ENSO oscillations about a mean temperature that remains constant for almost twenty years. There are five El Nino peaks in this period with La Nina valleys in between. To show these peaks clearly a magic marker must be used. Then put a dot at the midpoint of each line connecting an El Nino peak and its adjacent La Nina valley and fit a straight line to them. It will be horizontal. Next, put a ground-based curve like HadCRUT3 on the same graph. I did that in figure 24 in my book “What Warming?” The locations of El Nino peaks in both coincide but when you draw the straight line that defines the mean temperature of the ground-based curve it slopes up at 0.1 degrees per decade. This major difference comes from differences in the La Nina valleys in between the peaks. In ground-based curves they have all been raised up so that the depth of a valley in the ground-based record is only half the depth of the same valley in the satellite record. I know of no natural process that can zero in on low temperatures this way and raise them without raising the adjacent high temperature points as well. The time interval between the peaks is somewhat variable but averages five years. It requires a precise and long term process, active for twenty years, to raise all the valleys involved as consistently as they are. I can only think of one thing that can do it, and that is anthropogenic warming. This fakery started approximately at the same time as the satellite record and is not limited to HadCRUT3. To get such long term and widespread and coordinated action one needs to have some central control. I looked at the records available on the web and came across a document posted by GISS. It is called “GISS (Goddard Institute of Space Studies) Surface Temperature Analysis.” in the “History” section it says: “The basic GISS temperature analysis was defined in the late 1970s by James Hansen when a method of estimating global temperature change was needed.” Here I want to point out that the period from 1950 to the late seventies did not experience any temperature rise. There was a method of recording temperature already in use and it is somewhat puzzling why a method for determining temperature change was even needed at that point. In his book about his grandchildren Hansen relates that he left the Pioneer Venus Project in 1978 to join GISS because “The composition of the atmosphere of our home planet was changing before our eyes.” Apparently he had found a mission that was so important that it justified abandoning his experiment that was on the way to Venus by spacecraft. We know what happened next: from the late seventies on global temperature began to rise and by 1988 Hansen could declare to the US Senate that anthropogenic warming had arrived. Is it then just a coincidence that ground based temperatures started to rise as soon as his method was invented? We don’t know how his new method differs from the previous one. Was this method adopted by other temperature measuring groups? And, more importantly, is it possible that adoption of this method is what automatically lowers the depth of temperature valleys by lifting up the low points? We don’t know that either simply because full information on how his method really works has not been published. It should be made public to clear up the mystery surrounding these temperature discrepancies that have a huge impact on global warming science and politics. In the meantime I suggest abandoning all ground-based temperature curves that overlap the satellite era and using satellite temperature measurements exclusively from that point on.

Related news:
Quote:
Mine union boss: Coal industry could suffer same fate as bin Laden
By Andrew Restuccia – 04/04/12 11:37 AM ET
Tweet
The coal industry will suffer the same fate as Osama bin Laden under new climate regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the head of the United Mine Workers of America said this week.
“The Navy SEALs shot Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and Lisa Jackson shot us in Washington,” Cecil Roberts, president of the powerful union, said during an interview Tuesday on the West Virginia radio show MetroNews Talkline.
Roberts blasted Jackson, the EPA administrator, over the proposed regulations, which would limit greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants. Opponents of the regulations, including Roberts, say the new rules would be the death knell of the coal industry.
New coal-fired power plants would have to install technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions in order to comply with the rules. The technology, known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), “is not commercially available,” Roberts said.http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/219919-mine-union-chief-coal-industry-could-suffer-same-fate-as-osama-bin-laden

Alexej Buergin says:
April 4, 2012 at 8:53 am
The EU wants to have a trade war over their ETS, which might be exactely the right stimulus for the new B-747 to make a comeback against the A-380.
Does anyone have a idea about how big the influence of ETS on world temperature is supposed to be?
Only to the nearest whole number: 0

Tim Mantyla says:
April 4, 2012 at 10:31 am
“BTW, sorry for the misspellings and grammatical errors. My droid phone is having a really rough time with entering text on this website.”
Read your various posts, Tim.
Me’thinks it is the droid running the phone that is having a rough time accepting the data driven realities presented on this site. Citing RealClimate has the intellectual credibility of citing Dawson and Woodward’s reconstruction and analysis of Piltdown Man as ‘scientific consensus’ and settled science. All following communications from one such become immediately discounted by reasoning and knowledgeable participants..
Tim, your 1st step on the road to recovery from NWDS (Natural Warming Deniers Syndrome) is to admit you have a problem. Take some Mylanta and let me know if you are ready to take that step. I’ll coach you through the other 11 steps as you can manage them.
MtK (BS and MS – Metallurgical Engineering)

Mr. Monckton says:…as I pointed out in the posting, I had taken not their [V&T’s] high-end annual cost of cap-and-trade and related anti-CO2 measures ($402 billion) but the direct annual cost only ($182 billion), and I had multiplied it not by 10 for a full decade but only by 2.5, effectively dividing the direct cost by four. I had deliberately erred on the side of caution, here as elsewhere throughout the analysis.
Taking a nonsense number and multiplying it by a “conservative” fraction doesn’t make it any less a nonsense number. The fact is that your entire economic analysis –at least what you’ve written above– is based on a sloppy report paid for by a small business group and thoroughly panned by economists far and wide.
Economic input-output analysis is garbage in-garbage out. I’ve only heard of IMPLAN used in the context of paid consulting studies where somebody wants to make a public policy point and contrives a bunch of numbers to make a case their client is paying them to make. That’s exactly what the V&T report looks like.
The fact is, AB32 passed years ago, is the law of the land in CA, and started taking effect on Jan. 1 of this year. So if you say it’s at least 25% right, shouldn’t that mean that CA employment should drop by something on the order of 600,000 or 700,000 this year (one-quarter of the report’s job loss prediction)? So far that has not come to pass.

@Tim Mantyla says:
BTW, sorry for the misspellings and grammatical errors. My droid phone is having a really rough time with entering text on this website.
+++++++++++
Don’t worry. It fits well with the accuracy of the rest of your postings.
Suzuki?? Get real. The population bomb scare was over when he still had no grey hair.
Real Climate?? They couldn’t de-bunk a drunken sailor.

Good try, but your calculations are meaningless. Before any new policies will have passed the Sacramento legislature or even the hallowed halls of Brussels Rio +20 will have set new and binding economic rules. I hope your model has been equipped to convert all units from US$ to Personal Happiness Unit of Currency (go ahead–use the acronym).
The new calculations will show geometrically expanding rates of return on investment. Starting with China the world’s populations will be queuing up for original California hairshirts once it becomes glaringly obvious how happiness is gained by throwing off our hateful dependencies on gasoline and electricity. That state’s moral example has always shown the way to the blighted masses–they even brought us right-turn-on-red!

Clearly I am not a troll, unless you define troll as someone who tries to present truth in the face of massive ignorance and willful disregard for truth.
@J.Felton “By your logic we should not listen to you, because you are not a scientist. ”
Yours is a facetious argument. I did not say “Believe me.” Nor did I claim to be a scientist. I pointed you to scientific websites–but no one else on the site did to back claims against human-caused global warming (AGW). Yet others agree with them, no investigation or analysis necessary…hmmm, fishy. Scientists provide the evidence, which is sorely lacking on this site. (Okay, I didn’t mention where to find the most authoritative information, on IPCC reports and their website–so here it is: http://www.ipcc.ch/)
Yours isn’t even an argument, it’s an apples to oranges comparison. Readers here are lauding Monckton as if he were a sage or saint based on others’ opinions (which seem largely based on even others’ opinions). They fail to evaluate his history, character, acumen, training and potential ties to industry (vested interests).
Treat him like a priest or Jesus, that’s your right–but it’s not good policy or representative of scientific inquiry. It’s okay to act like a sheep or lemming, but it’s bad for humanity and the ecology to form policy based on it. And that’s what I am exposing here, among other problems.
I am not a scientist, but I am capable, after many years of research, of sifting wheat from chaff, and of understanding the scientific method and its power vs. mere opinion, hearsay and belief on the intermingled issues of global warming and climate change.
Also it is absolutely pathetic that you cannot answer a point with scientific evidence…instead you try (fail) to lead readers away from an obvious inability to debate and present evidence for your points.That is mere distraction. It is laughable…and it’s laughable that you cannot understand the ideas I present in my article on creativity. To each his own: Remain a sophomore, or choose to learn.
@Mike Dubrasich
@Monckton of Benchley
Also, to say that someone’s (Mike Dubrasich) opinions are ignorant is not an ad hominem attack. That is the definition of ignorance: “lacking knowledge of the thing specified”.
I did not defame you (or Monckton), but positions/ideas–which are very different. Reread my post. To state things contrary to observed fact IS ignorant. (It is, ironically, ignorant to confuse the two. And, all right, it’s actually impure, not “pure ignorance”–since the information that led him to believe such lies is impure–it is fraudulent. To believe such false statements in the face of massive evidence to the contrary is ignorant, reveals a lack of willingness–or ability–to reasonable evaluate statements.
Now, as to your claim that global warming is not happening: Seriously? Check out the CIA’s and the U.S. military’s recent reports on how climate change–specifically global warming–will lead and IS leading to starvation, crop loss, land degradation and political destabilization, and consequent treat of war and other mass social problems. For which we must prepare. If that’s not serious enough for you, I can’t figure out what is.
As for the evidence, it is all over the Internet on scientific websites. Look it up. Don’t just cherry-pick and believe the rare scientist (usually discredited) who disagrees. That’s just…ignorant.
By the way, if conservatives, who typically support a strong defense, need a justification for a larger defense budget, they can use…the envelope please…global warming! Ahhh, the irony.
Mr. Dubasich, if you choose to feel slighted by presenting opinions which do not fit with established science, I am sorry you feel upset. But the facts are the facts. You are entitled to your own opinions, but facts exist independent of those opinions. I did not not do the science, I merely looked it up. And I revealed facts in contrast with information that was falsely and ignorantly presented as fact.

Tim Mantyla,
Thank you for your beliefs. However, if we remove your appeals to authority arguments and your constant sniping at Monckton of Brenchley, there isn’t really much left except RealClimate-type anti-science opinion. Better get back to RC; they probably lost 5% of their viewers when you came here to the internet’s Best Science site.

RE: the “exponential” population growth and the peril the Earth faces…
I seem to be using the wrong terminology here on the rate of population growth. No matter for now. Sn you are technically correct, Mr. Monckton.
The main point, and the most vital one, which many seem to be avoiding, is that we have ALREADY exceeded our safe, healthy human capacity on the planet. The degradation of land, sea and air is powerful evidence, and so is the mass starvation, social ills, and other problems rampant around the globe.
If we can’t get our act together enough to stop all pollution, homelessness, poverty, and most environmental degradation–then we are in real trouble. Those of us who live in the US, in our bubbles of economic contentment with cushy jobs and cars and homes are not living the nightmare 90% of the planet must endure. No wonder you feel no need to change: Ignorance indeed is bliss!
Indeed, what is the human purpose?? To live and die in our own excrement, pushed out b.y the collective, rampant, uncontrollable industrial rectum?
I hope to wake you up. Slumber is joy…but we must all face reality, and denying climate change and our role in it is only part of a cushy, false dream that is thoroughly debunked by FACTS. If you stay asleep and ignorant, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.
Intelligent, compassionate, activists like me are the cure. You could be, too–if you merely accept realities as they are, not as you desperately wish.

Monckton entirely misses the point that the $182 billion figure has no basis in reality to begin with.
[snip. Enough free advertising for that unreliable blog. Make your best arguments on your own. ~dbs, mod.]
There’s a phrase ‘skeptics’ like to use – garbage in, garbage out. That accurately describes Monckton’s “analysis” here.

kim2ooo says:
April 4, 2012 at 11:27 am
MODERATOR: REMINDER to commenters: Don’t feed the trolls, but do visit http://timmantyla.wordpress.com/ for a good laugh…. brains….BRAINS!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
But he told me not to go to a dishwasher repairman for plumbing help…But sent me to a fruit-fly scientist for AGW 🙂 🙂
O’kay I’ll be good 😉
*
Love this! Kim2000, I think you’re great. 🙂

we will beat you all we are starting our carbon tax 1st of july in australia . please look and see now long it takes for us to go down the drain. the gillard gov’t is already borrowing $100,000,000 per day. god help australia

Dear Viscount,
You state …preventing warmer weather is many times costlier than letting it happen and paying the cost of adapting to it in a focused way.
Please specify the alleged “costs” of warmer weather, and while you’re at it, please specify the benefits.
I think you’ll find that the costs are negligible while the benefits are appreciable. Why prevent something of huge benefit, even if you could do it cheaply? Let us not kill golden geese, even if we have a handy ax. (Which we don’t, I agree with you on that part.)
PS to Tim — Assuage your guilt; I don’t feel slighted or upset by your ignorance.

Tim Mantyla says: April 4, 2012 at 3:49 pm
Intelligent, compassionate, activists like me are the cure. You could be, too–if you merely accept realities as they are, not as you desperately wish.
Mr. Mantyla, do you have any idea just how pompous, arrogant, condescending and ignorant you sound? You certainly don’t have command of the facts and you are utterly oblivious to the qualifications of the people at this site you so freely deride. Tool.

RobW says:
April 4, 2012 at 11:36 amAnother pesky little fact. according to the world experts on ice the global average ice coverage is actually +0.16 thousand sq. kilometers. (Arctic -0.3, Antarctic +0.46).
You mean now we have TOO MUCH sea ice? Wow, first Obama makes the sea level fall, and now THIS? He’s much better than I thought. Next thing you know, global temperatures will be falling. Oh, uh, they are? Amazing. I wonder if he’s a forcing or a feedback.

Tim Mantyla says: @ April 4, 2012 at 3:49 pm
….The main point, and the most vital one, which many seem to be avoiding, is that we have ALREADY exceeded our safe, healthy human capacity on the planet. The degradation of land, sea and air is powerful evidence, and so is the mass starvation, social ills, and other problems rampant around the globe…..
____________________________________
The USA is in better shape than it has been for a hundred years. We now have more forests because wood is no longer burned for warmth. Mother Nature Network reports More trees than there were 100 years ago? It’s true! Protection and responsible harvesting are the reasons behind the success story. Pollution has been cleaned up since I was a kid in the fifties and sixties. We no longer dump chemicals and raw sewage into our rivers among other things. This shows a healthy, wealthy economy thanks to cheap energy PROTECTS the environment. All you have to do is look at the pollution in China to see the difference.
Mass starvation is not because of a lack of food but because of manipulation by the World Trade Organization, and Goldman Sachs among others. President Clinton admitted it TWICE.
You can lay much of the “social ills, and other problems rampant around the globe” directly at the World Bank’s or IMF’s door steps. This is the same World Bank that is squarely behind CAGW. The same World Bank that provided Robert Watson as leader of the IPCC. Therefore it should be no surprise that the Guardian UK reported “The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents …The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment”… hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank
Oh and in case you were wondering the Mass Media that you are getting your info from was controlled by J P Morgan (bank) in 1917 and still is now.CHEAP abundant energy is the solution to everything you are complaining about.
This is an example of what fuel and the fertilizer produced from oil has done to food production in the USA. (From http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blfarm1.htm )
In 1830 it took 250-300 labor-hours to produce 100 bushels of wheat from 5 acres with a walking plow, brush harrow, hand broadcast of seed, sickle, and flail.
In 1930 -it took 15-20 labor-hours to produce 100 bushels of wheat from 5 acres with a 3-bottom gang plow, tractor, 10-foot tandem disk, harrow, 12-foot combine, and trucks. (Average annual consumption of commercial fertilizer: 6,599,913 tons)
In 1987 it took 3 labor-hours to produce 100 bushels of wheat from 3 acres with tractor, 35-foot sweep disk, 30-foot drill, 25-foot self-propelled combine, and trucks.
Why in heck do you want to go back to spending every daylight hour following the north end of a south facing mule and other back breaking labor? Why do you want to reduce well over 70% of us back to serfdom doing manual labor on corporate farms?

Monroe says:
April 4, 2012 at 9:09 am
There’s quite the underground economy in Cali and I think it will grow by leaps and bounds in the next few years.
____________________________________
Even an underground economy needs energy. I expect most of that underground economy will be Latino. They are already adapting. Roosters and chickens and pigs in urban L.A., oh my!“In Southeast L.A., the black population has dropped from 71% in 1980 to 24% in the 2000 census; the Latino population grew from 27% in 1980 to 74% in 2000.”

Some are critical of the study Lord Monckton used. Here is the rebutal to the critisms by the authors of the paper.

March 23, 2010 07:08 PM Eastern Daylight TimeStatement from Dr. Sanjay Varshney and Dr. Dennis Tootelian Regarding Recent LAO Analysis of AB 32 Study and the Study of the California Cost of Regulations
A recent analysis from California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) questioned the methodology of a study on the costs of AB 32 implementation that Dr. Sanjay Varshney and Dr. Dennis Tootelian conducted on behalf of the California Small Business Roundtable. We are pleased that our study has garnered so much attention and comments because the issue of economic impacts is vitally important to California. We also note that the LAO has reached similar conclusions as we have about the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) economic impact analysis.
We stand by the findings of our research, and emphasize that the costs of AB 32 are materializing quickly as utilities announce sky-high rate increases, and still the economic benefits of AB 32 are yet to be seen. In this way, the facts are supportive of our research predictions. The methodology that was employed in our report was beneficial in accounting for the variables; our approach was practical and relevant to the current economic reality. Furthermore, our report on the cost of regulations for small business was based on the 2005 federal study by Mark Crain which uses ordinal rankings and relies on other studies – a common approach in academic research. …. http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100323007307/en/Statement-Dr.-Sanjay-Varshney-Dr.-Dennis-Tootelian

Another bottom line: if we want to minimize the total environmental footprint of Man by bringing down the global population growth rate to replacement level, we need to raise standards of living worldwide. And the cheapest and most effective way to do that is to give affordable, fossil-fueled electricity to those who don’t have it yet. For this reason, the biggest threat to the Earth’s environment is environmentalists.

I’m not sure that is logical. It seems as though you are saying that giving the world’s poor a washing machine and wiring it to the grid will bring down the birth rate. On the contrary, we are not going to “give” anyone anything, we are going to trade and then poor will increase their skills and productivity until they are no longer poor. The quickest way for them to become more productive is the use of labor saving devices that typically require energy. But labor saving devices need not be energy intensive. It does not follow that simply using more energy is an effective way to reduce the birth rate.

A bit more support for California job loss.
You know it is getting bad when someone is in the business of helping other companies flee from Calif.

Business Relocation CoachCalif. Business Departures Increasing — Now Five Times Higher Than In 2009
Costs are illustrated by the fact that a business leaving the City of Los Angeles for a nearby county can save up to 20% in costs while moving to another state can save up to 40% in costs….
Today, California is experiencing the fastest rate of disinvestment events based on public domain information, closure notices to the state, and information from affected employees in the three years since a specialized tracking system was put into place.
Out-of-state economic development officials are traveling through the state to alert frustrated business owners and corporate executives to their friendlier business climate versus California’s hostility toward commercial enterprises….

Jobs lost: 937,941
Total establishments lost: 34,166
Lost businesses with fewer than 100 employees: 32,160
Lost businesses with 100 to 499 employees: 1,841
Lost businesses with more than 500 employees: 165

California is hemorrhaging and the politicians are sticking their heads in the sand.

rgbatduke says:
April 4, 2012 at 9:53 am
“Monckton openly acknowledges that CO_2 is a greenhouse gas, that greenhouse warming is an important contributor to global mean temperatures in the energy balance differential equations, and that humans have contributed to increases in CO_2 concentration in the atmosphere, because all of these things are true — experimentally and empirically confirmed facts. So do all reasonable skeptics familiar with the science and evidence, including myself.”
===================================================
The expression “reasonable sceptics” suggests somehow, that other sceptics are not reasonable, that’s why I believe that the neutral tern “moderate/sceptical warmists” would do a better job.
As for “all of these things are true”, I would like to say 2 things.
First, the calculation of the “global warming” is based on something scientifically unproven. Just read this and judge for yourself: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1987/1987_Hansen_Lebedeff.pdf .
Second, the idea about warming “greenhouse gasses” is very old and was debunked long ago in 1909 by Professor Wood: http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/wood_rw.1909.html . Unfortunately, a lot of people do not know that and the IPCC somehow for absolutely unfathomable reasons (lol) failed to mention it.
Lord Monckton is a good and unfortunate example of a misled in that respect person. He knows about the experiment of John Tyndall, possibly also about the theory of Arrhenius, but this is not enough.

eric1skeptic says @ April 4, 2012 at 6:28 pm
….It seems as though you are saying that giving the world’s poor a washing machine and wiring it to the grid will bring down the birth rate. On the contrary, we are not going to “give” anyone anything, we are going to trade and then poor will increase their skills and productivity until they are no longer poor. The quickest way for them to become more productive is the use of labor saving devices that typically require energy. But labor saving devices need not be energy intensive. It does not follow that simply using more energy is an effective way to reduce the birth rate.
_____________________________________
Energy is not just the electricity that runs the factories that produce tractors it is also fuel. In subsistence farming children are free labor, my Ex was driving a tractor by age five for example. Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of child labour worldwideMost working children in the world are found on farms and plantations, not in factories, sweatshops or urban areas,” says Jennie Dey DePryck, Chief of FAO’s Rural Institutions and Participation Service.
So to a farm family more children is better. To an urban family a child is an expense and that is why using energy to turn subsistence farms that feed one family into farms that can feed many people so more families move to the cities where Dad can get a job in a factory and the kids can go to school reduces the birth rate.

With all due respect to Lord Monckton, while you are technically correct, trying to reason with the people in charge of California is like trying to teach my cat calculus. It just doesn’t work.
Please understand that over the years I have lost all faith in the people in charge here to grasp anything beyond their foolish fantasies.

A few more brief replies to commenters.
Those who continue to question my use of the Varshney and Tootelian study, where I took their estimated cost value and, in effect, divided it by 4 before using it, must surely accept that there is some net cost to California’s cap-and-trade and other anti-CO2 measures. Varshney and Tootelian, both well-qualified economists who stand by their findings, have done their best to assess the net cost, and they stand by their estimates. If anyone would like to produce a credible alternative cost estimate for all of California’s anti-CO2 measures, I shall be happy to run it through my model.
It is also worth appreciating that the climatological side of the model does not in any way depend upon Varshney and Tootelian’s work. It is a fact that even if the scheme worked only 0.34% of global CO2 emissions will be abated. It is a fact that, on the IPCC’s central estimates, this remission (however little or much it costs) would reduce the radiative forcing from CO2 by less than one-thousandth of a Watt per square meter, and that in turn the amount of manmade warming the scheme would abate would be less than one-thousandth of a Fahrenheit degree. Californa’s scheme, on its own, will make no measurable difference to global temperatures. And, as I have pointed out, scaling it up globally merely makes the expense global.
And I am sorry to see that, yet again, the people who defy the evidence and assume there is no greenhouse effect fall back on the experiment of Wood, which no one seems to have replicated recently. Reading the account of that experiment leads me to suspect that his controls upon it were nothing like as rigorous as those of Tyndall, who, half a century earlier, had demonstrated that there is a greenhouse effect by a well-designed experiment, by careful measurement, and by the application of established theory to the results.
Finally, a bad-tempered troll has, in a single posting, accused me of having potential links to various unspecified industries and then denied that he has used any ad-hominem arguments against me. I have no actual or potential links with any industries: and, unlike the climate extremists, I have no actual or potential links to governments either (in the sense of taking money from them to advocate a particular point of view on the climate). Rightly, the moderators have been snipping many of the troll’s comments, which do serve a valuable purpose in demonstrating the contrast between the rationality with which the skeptics try to deploy their case and the militant, un-self-critical abandonment of all reason on the part of the climate extremists. One of the reasons why I have spent so much time on the strange intellectual aberration that is catastrophic manmade warming is that one of the most serious harms done by the climate extremists lies in their assault on reason itself: and it is the power of reason, one of the three great powers of the soul in Christian theology, that marks us out most clearly from the rest of the visible creation and also marks our closeness in likeness to our Creator. If we lose our use of reason, we lose our humanity – and we lose the spark of the divine.

Tim Mantyla says:
April 4, 2012 at 11:04 am
@kim2oooYour laughter is silly here, it’s clear you fail to check the facts. It is obvious that you are no scientist either, and have no respect for science.
Tim, kim2000 is a kid. Where level-headed and investigative scientific thinking is concerned, she can wipe the floor with you.The inanity of your commentary here, which understandably made her giggle, makes this clear.

I did a similar calculation for Canada’s GHG emissions reduction plan in late-2010 after the legislation was brought before the Senate and defeated. Unsurprisingly, this caused considerable angst among Canada’s leftists, so I wrote up the following to make a fact-based argument in support of the Senate’s decision.
My work is rather basic compared to Christopher Monckton’s, since I don’t address monetary costs or benefits. But, I hope nobody will mind if I post it here anyway as an independent confirmation that efforts to cool the planet by reducing GHG emissions are ineffective (even under the most generous set of assumptions imaginable, and using the IPCC’s own estimates for emissions growth and climate sensitivity).
Enjoy.
*********************************************************************
Estimating the Impact of Climate Change Bill C-311
by Russ Rodrigues
November 27, 2010
Environmental groups became furious last month when the Canadian Senate voted against Bill C-311, known as the Climate Change Accountability Act, which would have committed Canadians to reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. But what would Bill C-311 have actually achieved? I mean in real, concrete terms? How much of an impact would it have had in preventing global warming?
If you believe climate scientists (and I generally do), then GHG emissions reductions should have a quantifiable impact on global average surface temperature. So exactly how much cooler would the world be in 2100 if Canada were to cut its emissions? To find out, let’s do some basic math, using data from Environment Canada (www.ec.gc.ca), the Intragovernmental Panel on Climate Change (www.ipcc.ch), and the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center(http://cdiac.ornl.gov).
According to Environment Canada, the country’s total GHG emissions stood at 592 MtCO2eq (million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) in 1990, and rose to 734 MtCO2eq in 2008 (Note 1). For consistency in our calculations we’ll convert the units to MtC (million tonnes of carbon) by dividing by a factor of 44/12 (the molecular weight conversion factor from CO2 to C) (Note 2). That amounts to 161.5 MtC in 1990, and 200.2 MtC in 2008.
Let’s assume that without the bill, Canada would have continued to grow its emissions in line with the forecast for OECD nations in the IPCC’s worst case scenario… SRES A1FI (Note 3). Using the scenario’s total CO2 emissions growth rate, and 2008 as a starting point, Canada’s emissions would grow to 233 MtC by 2020, to 281 MtC by 2050, and to 419 MtC by 2100. Canada’s cumulative carbon emissions from now to the end of the century would add up to 27.2 GtC (billion tons of carbon).
Assuming now that Bill C-311 had become law, and Canada did indeed achieve the emissions reduction targets… 25% below 1990 levels (or 121.1 MtC) by 2020, and 80% below 1990 levels (or 32.3 MtC) by 2050, with emissions thereafter remaining absolutely flat until the end of the century, then cumulative emissions from now to 2100 would total only 6.1 GtC. That would be a whopping difference of 21.1 GtC prevented from entering the earth’s atmosphere.
But what impact would that have on the atmosphere? First, not all of all the emissions would actually remain in the atmosphere until 2100. According to CDIAC, approximately 60% of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are absorbed by the oceans or taken up in plant biomass (Note 4). So only 40% of those 21.1 GtC would have remained in the atmosphere for a net difference of 8.4 GtC. Next, as a general rule, it takes 2.13 GtC of emissions to increase or decrease the atmospheric CO2 concentration by 1 ppmv (Note 5), so a reduction of 8.4 GtC would result in an atmospheric CO2 concentration that was 4.0 ppmv lower than would have otherwise been the case at the end of the century.
What does 4.0 ppmv CO2 mean in terms of global temperature? Assuming that by the end of the century, global CO2 concentrations have risen to 550 ppmv (up from todays 389 ppmv but in line with the IPCC’s “best case scenario” – SRES B1) (Note 6), and assuming climate sensitivity of 3.0 degrees C for a doubling of CO2 concentrations (based on the IPCC’s “best estimate”) (Note 7), then the total impact on global average temperature would be only 0.031 degrees C (Note 8). This is an amount less that the measurement accuracy of even the best meteorological instruments.
So, is it really worth committing to 40 years of carbon emissions reductions (which necessarily involves increasing the cost of hydrocarbon fuels in order to both reduce consumption and force an industry-wide conversion to more expensive alternative energy sources), all so that after nearly all of us are dead, our great grand-children can enjoy a world that is imperceptibly cooler?
All I can say is, if I were a senator, I know how I would have voted.
Notes:
1. http://www.ec.gc.ca/Publications/default.asp?lang=En&xml=492D914C-2EAB-47AB-A045-C62B2CDACC29 The National Inventory Report 1990–2008: Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks in Canada.
2. http://cdiac.ornl.gov/faq.html#Q9
3. http://sres.ciesin.org/data/Version1.1/table/A1G_MINICAM/A1G_MINICAM_OECD90.html – Anthropogenic Emissions (Standardized) – Total CO2 GtC
4. http://cdiac.ornl.gov/faq.html#Q7
5. http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/convert.html – Table 3. Common Conversion Factors
6. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-10-26.html – CO2 Concentrations Scenario B1
7. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/tssts-4-5.html – Climate Response to Radiative Forcing
8. 0.031 deg C = 3.0 deg C x ln((550-4)/550) / ln(2)

I don’t do math too good, so I try to simplify things for myself. The way I understand it, and I’m open to corrections from anyone, is that what money really represents is energy. Behind every dollar there is a quantity of calories required to produce labour, thought and resources. So than, the gazillions that have gone are still going into boondoggles and gabbing about climate use up far more energy or calories than can ever be replaced with any “mitigation” this onanism can accomplish. The unquantifiable cost in human misery, deaths and futures wasted is another story.
As Lord Monkton reminds, this is fundamentally a battle over reason. And whoever tells us that warm is bad and that destroying our civilization is worth a fraction of degree Centigrade doesn’t do reason.

Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 4, 2012 at 7:46 pm
And I am sorry to see that, yet again, the people who defy the evidence and assume there is no greenhouse effect fall back on the experiment of Wood, which no one seems to have replicated recently. Reading the account of that experiment leads me to suspect that his controls upon it were nothing like as rigorous as those of Tyndall, who, half a century earlier, had demonstrated that there is a greenhouse effect by a well-designed experiment, by careful measurement, and by the application of established theory to the results.
===============================================
Funny, nobody have called me “the people” before, but thank you, I will refer to myself as “me the people” from now on (lol).
Now let me kindly enlarge your otherwise significant knowledge on the issue.
First, neither professor Wood nor humble me assume “there is no greenhouse effect” nor demonstrates the Wood’s experiment that there is no greenhouse effect (in sense of capability of certain gasses to absorb and re-emit IR radiation). What the Wood’s experiment does indeed demonstrate is the mere fact, that a much stronger effect (of the glass lid blocking much more IR than the “greenhouse gasses” are capable of) is extremely weak and does not produce a significant rise in temperature. You can also find a reasonable explanation in the Wood’s article. To put it in a simple way, the surface can not radiate much for the simple reason: the air takes the energy from the surface via contact and convection, the air cools the surface this way and the relatively cold surface can not radiate much.
Second, it is not correct that “no one seems to have replicated the experiment of Wood recently”: http://www.biocab.org/Wood_Experiment_Repeated.html . Search engines are our friends.
Third, the Wood’s experiment is so simple, that you probably will be able to replicate it at low costs either at home or somewhere at a university, record it on video and then include this video in your presentations. I am very sure, that this would have a much more significant impact on the audience than many other things.

I am almost believing that Tim Mantyla’s comments are Anthony’s alternative belated April fools day joke ! Just kidding
Tim please take some time to absorb the discussions here. There is much to learn even if you do not agree and your understanding will grow with time. Look to the links to other science websites linked here also.

Well, if all the “sake of argument” presumptions from IPCC and Stern and so on are backed out, and the net benefits of added CO2 are acknowledged, the ROI for “mitigation” turns into a skyrocketting negative figure. I’d guesstimate that for every $1 dedicated to mitigation/reduction, the net benefit is probably about -$10. How to spend $11 by spending $1!
Actually, all this “granting for the sake of argument” is probably unwise. It indirectly strengthens the illusions and delusions that are being rebutted.

Lord Moncton said:
“One of the reasons why I have spent so much time on the strange intellectual aberration that is catastrophic manmade warming is that one of the most serious harms done by the climate extremists lies in their assault on reason itself: and it is the power of reason, one of the three great powers of the soul in Christian theology, that marks us out most clearly from the rest of the visible creation and also marks our closeness in likeness to our Creator. If we lose our use of reason, we lose our humanity – and we lose the spark of the divine.”
God Bless you Sir. It takes courage and goodness to say these things during the rise of totalitarian socialim/communism in the West.

Purely for information’ sake to what ends will the money coereced from Californian taxpayers through the cap-n-trade scheme be put?
Presumably, i will simply be re-directed into the pockets of favoured businesses and individuals who will spend it or invest it (or even if they ‘save it’ their bank will on-lend/ invest/ gamble it) on….what,…products, schemes, activities that emit zero CO2?
I don’t think so…even if all the cash was diverted to manufacturers/ operators of wind farms/ solar farms/geothermal farms etc etc… the money will be used to pay staff, buy vehicles and fuel, buy manufactured items and raw materials, land etc. etc. and thus converted back eventually into CO2. Presumably, it’s why existing cap-n-trade schemes (mentioned by CM) have no observable effect on CO2.
So the economics don’t add up in any respect: and so CMs generous treatment of its impact on CO2 emissions is even more of an under-estimate once the life-cycle of the cap-n-trade proceeds are taken into account.
It’s simply stealing from Peter and ghanding the loot to Paul in good-old-fashioned style socialist thievery.
Just one BIG scam.

Lord Monckton,
Grateful to hear how are the proceeds of cap-n-trade schemes are generally treated in models evaluating their cost-effectiveness?
Presumably, a good proportion of the revenues to govt from coercian of taxpayers is simply re-distributed to favoured individuals and groups. These then spend, save or invest these dollars on products, services or returns, generated or manufactured through the burning of fossil fuels.
And even where those dollars might be saved, this really means the bank with those savings on-loans for consumption/ investment in consumption production.
Even if all the money coerced from taxpayers by govt was handed over to the various hare-brained ‘renewable’ scams, those sham-scam-schemes would in any case need to use the cash to buy equipment, land, pay staff, run vehicles etc,. etc. all or nearly all of which will, at some point be associated with CO2 emissions.
So isn’t it really another form of socialist thievery from the productive members of society to benefit the parasitical classes, which ever way you look at it?
Or to put it more simply: one ginourmous SCAM?

Greg House says:
April 4, 2012 at 9:07 pm
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 4, 2012 at 7:46 pm
And I am sorry to see that, yet again, the people who defy the evidence and assume there is no greenhouse effect fall back on the experiment of Wood, which no one seems to have replicated recently. Reading the account of that experiment leads me to suspect that his controls upon it were nothing like as rigorous as those of Tyndall, who, half a century earlier, had demonstrated that there is a greenhouse effect by a well-designed experiment, by careful measurement, and by the application of established theory to the results.
===============================================
Funny, nobody have called me “the people” before, but thank you, I will refer to myself as “me the people” from now on (lol).
Now let me kindly enlarge your otherwise significant knowledge on the issue.
First, neither professor Wood nor humble me assume “there is no greenhouse effect” nor demonstrates the Wood’s experiment that there is no greenhouse effect (in sense of capability of certain gasses to absorb and re-emit IR radiation). What the Wood’s experiment does indeed demonstrate is the mere fact, that a much stronger effect (of the glass lid blocking much more IR than the “greenhouse gasses” are capable of) is extremely weak and does not produce a significant rise in temperature.
=====================
No no no, I is me the people Monkton wants to shut down talking, we me say there is no greenhouse effect period
Because the whole thing is a sleight of hand magic contrik from the beginning – the comic cartoon energy budget has taken out the whole of the water cycle. Without water the Earth would be much much hotter, water vapour cools by 52°C from around 67°C to come down to 15°C.
There is no “33°C greenhouse warming from -18°C to 15°C” – there is no greenhouse warming because that figure is fictional fisics sleight of hand.
The rest of the fisics produced by warmists, has been created by the AGWScienceFiction meme production department to support this non-existent “33°C greenhouse gas warming” – for which no experimental let alone theoretical real word physics evidence has ever been forthcoming.
Prove it. What’s so hard to do here? There is no evidence and no proof forthcoming because that “33°C greenhouse gas warming” doesn’t exist. Have I made that clear? It doesn’t exist.
Arguments about whether carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas or not or can do what the warmists say it can do, are completely and utterly irrelevant because carbon dioxide is fully part of the Water Cycle, all pure clean rain is carbonic acid, and they have removed the water cycle. The concept is a contrik and the rest of the pretend fisics memes of the energy budget which have been created to support it are also just as contrived. Shortwave heating land and oceans?! The heat direct from the Sun not reaching the Earth’s surface?! Carbon dioxide defying gravity to stay up for hundreds and thousands of years in the atmosphere accumulating?! The empty space atmosphere of ideal gas hard dot molecules without volume, weight or attraction zipping through it at great speeds?!
That’s why they have no gravity. That’s why they have no convection. That’s why their clouds appear by magic. That’s why they have no sound…
Enough of pandering to this pretence. Put back the water cycle and the “33°C greenhouse gas warming” disappears.

eric1skeptic says:
April 4, 2012 at 6:28 pm
…
The quickest way for them to become more productive is the use of labor saving devices that typically require energy. But labor saving devices need not be energy intensive. It does not follow that simply using more energy is an effective way to reduce the birth rate.

The links of your logic don’t connect; “simply using more energy” is a strawman, and was not suggested. Making cheap energy available is the point. Those who do the work will then choose between breeding more child laborers and using it.

Just as CO2 is an un-problem, and indeed a benefit, the “population scare” is an un-problem, and more births would be a benefit.
There is looming depopulation by birth shortage in almost all the world — except the US; huge male child imbalances throughout Asia; and falling lifespan in Russia.http://www.fpri.org/ww/0505.200407.eberstadt.demography.html
Lord Monckton, the UN actually does make good population estimates, Open this UNPD spreadsheet’s “Low Band” page (tab along the lower edge). Their Low Band has been (exclusively) accurate since the UNPD was first created decades ago.
Current projection: Peak <8bn by ~2040, slowly accelerating decline thereafter.
As for the "reasonable warmists'" acceptance of GHE, here's the result of using a slightly more physics-based model of the planet:http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/joseph-postma/#more-5682
This is a reprint of a published overview of a longer paper:http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/the_model_atmosphere.pdf
The core "model" looks like this:http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/fig3.png?w=614
Caption: Figure 3: [Although total energy out equals total energy in], Earth is in fact, on average, cooler than the solar radiative input temperature. With this single physical reality, the need to postulate a radiative greenhouse effect evaporates.
The key is to mathematically acknowledge the imbalance of actual energy input: very large at noon in the tropics, and falling away with distance around the globe. And to deal with actual delivered energy, not with flux. This is an accurate model, very unlike the “average” input-output underpinnings of the Trenberth cartoon.
So if there is such a thing as GHG back-radiation, it operates below the level of detectability. Or as G&T quote Schack as saying: the radiative component of heat transfer of CO2, though relevant at the temperatures in combustion chambers, can be neglected at atmospheric temperatures. The influence of carbonic acid on the Earth’s climates is definitively unmeasurable.
Note the very precise language, including “the Earth’s climates”. There is an ensemble of regional climates around the globe. The “global climate” is a nonentity.

The Friedman Multiple applies: every job artificially created via taxation destroys two jobs among the taxpaying classes: and, according to a recent Scottish report, each “green job” provided at taxpayers’ expense destroys getting on for five real jobs elsewhere.>/i>
Does the Noble Lord have a reference for the Scottish report?

@Greg House:
It would be helpful if someone repeats Nasif S. Nahle experiments (which were a comprehensive repeat of Woods)http://www.biocab.org/Experiment_on_Greenhouses__Effect.pdf
by injecting CO2 into the boxes to see if there was any measurable difference in temperature rise.
A temperature rise with CO2 injection , with and without the additional protective glass would be illuminating due to the masking of long wave radiation.
Woods, confirmed by Nahle, has debunked the ‘basic greenhouse theory’ but have not yet addressed whether CO2 ‘warms the atmosphere’ as people infer due to Tyndals lab experiments.

Some responses to comments:
The paper quantifying the job destruction caused by the artificial creation of so-called “green” jobs in Scotland was by Verso Economics in February 2011.
Dr. Nahle, in the light of comments by Willis Eschenbach and others, has accepted that his attempt to demonstrate by measurement that there is no greenhouse effect was not successful, since the equipment he used was neither designed for the purpose for which he used it nor suitable for it.
Though Wood’s experiment has not been replicated in a properly-calibrated way (and, even if it had been, the conclusion that there is no greenhouse effect does not follow), Tyndall’s experiment has been replicated many times, and a version of it can easily be done at home (or faked on TV, like Gore’s recent effort). There are numerous other lines of definitive evidence, from spectral-line analysis to quantum-level physics, which demonstrate the greenhouse effect. In the face of this weight of evidence, those who try to maintain that there is no greenhouse effect are merely vexatious unless they can come up with some proper, well-controlled, experimental evidence and also a reasonably detailed explanation of why each of the many lines of evidence establishing that there is a greenhouse effect is wrong.
My concern about allowing these tiresome and scientifically unsupported assertions that there is no greenhouse effect is that their real purpose seems to be to disrupt the genuine flow of scientific conversation on these threads and also to discredit climate skeptics generally by making them look like lunatics who reject established science.
Three discernible attempts to wreck proper discussion on sites such as this are evident. First, the trolls, who identify themselves as trolls by their sneering, ad-hominem tone and their inability to discuss scientific and economic questions in a rational and dispassionate way. In the end, they are helpful in that they expose the non-science and quasi-religious belief that lurks at the heart of climate extremism.
Next, the red-herring merchants, like the commenter on this thread who introduced an irrelevant incongruity in the shape of a scientifically-unsupported (and insupportable) contention that surface tension prevents the sun from warming the oceans. Swim down a few feet and look up. If you see daylight, the solar radiation is reaching you. The introduction of red herrings into scientific discussions was described by Aristotle 200 years ago as a logical fallacy. The medieval schoolmen later labeled it the argumentum ad ignorationem elenchi.
Thirdly, the small and irritating group that maintain, in the teeth of the established evidence but without offering any credible analysis or evidence in refutation of previous results, that there is no greenhouse effect.
I am glad that the moderators are now coming down heavily on the logical fallacy that is the argumentum ad hominem whenever the trolls resort to it. They have still allowed through one or two comments that I should have preferred to see either justified or deleted. For instance, those who make accusations of “lying” should not be allowed to make such accusations here, but should instead be allowed to state what they think has been misstated and why, leaving it to the readers to form their own judgments. but this growing unwillingness on the part of the moderators to tolerate mere yah-boo is welcome.
As to the remaining two categories of wreckers,at present they are given free rein to disrupt these discussions. How to deal with them without censoring them? Perhaps the best approach would be to create two new threads – let us call them ignoratio elenchi for the red-herring brigade and ignoratio scientiae for those who are reluctant to admit there is a greenhouse effect and are also reluctant to provide any credible evidence that there is none. These two threads will give these groups the full right to be heard and to have their ideas discussed, so that there is no censorship. Transferring red herrings and insufficiently-supported attacks on established scientific results away from discussions such as this one would, in my submission, greatly enhance the attractiveness, readability and usefulness of this splendid website.

Ally E. says:
April 4, 2012 at 4:22 pm
kim2ooo says:
April 4, 2012 at 11:27 am
[….]
But he told me not to go to a dishwasher repairman for plumbing help…But sent me to a fruit-fly scientist for AGW 🙂 🙂
O’kay I’ll be good 😉
*
Love this! Kim2000, I think you’re great. 🙂
Thank you 🙂

experiments.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 5, 2012 at 6:47 amome responses to comments:
…
As to the remaining two categories of wreckers,at present they are given free rein to disrupt these discussions. How to deal with them without censoring them? Perhaps the best approach would be to create two new threads – let us call them ignoratio elenchi for the red-herring brigade and ignoratio scientiae for those who are reluctant to admit there is a greenhouse effect and are also reluctant to provide any credible evidence that there is none. These two threads will give these groups the full right to be heard and to have their ideas discussed, so that there is no censorship. Transferring red herrings and insufficiently-supported attacks on established scientific results away from discussions such as this one would, in my submission, greatly enhance the attractiveness, readability and usefulness of this splendid website.
[snip] You rant against CAGW’s censoring and demeaning, etc. instead of looking critically at the science, yet you do the very same thing, and, with the worst of them you want to consign all opposition to the gulags to avoid being challenged..
I’ve asked you before, show the greenhouse effect you keep saying exists. Don’t just wave in the vague direction of Tyndall claiming it’s ‘settled science’ – I’ve read through Tyndall, I can’t find it.
Damn it, fetch it. Or can’t you find anything to support it in the considerable amount of science discovery from the time of your unproven ‘Tyndall proved it’ claim?
I, for one, can’t take you seriously because you do what all ‘warmists’ do, pretend that the science proves your claimed ‘greenhouse effect’, but always avoid show and tell. What stops you providing something better than your hypocritical ad homs in lieu of science fact?

rgbatduke says:
April 4, 2012 at 9:53 am
“The thing that “blocks heat transfer” (or enables it) down low is a mix of conduction, convection, and radiation phenomena, one important component of which is CO_2. Monckton openly acknowledges that CO_2 is a greenhouse gas, that greenhouse warming is an important contributor to global mean temperatures in the energy balance differential equations, and that humans have contributed to increases in CO_2 concentration in the atmosphere, because all of these things are true — experimentally and empirically confirmed facts. So do all reasonable skeptics familiar with the science and evidence, including myself.”

= = = =
rgb,
Usually, in reasonable skeptic dialogs, such statements as yours “that greenhouse warming is an important contributor to global mean temperatures in the energy balance differential equations” are qualified by a statement saying something like all the many other physical science aspects of the Earth-atmospheric system being remaining equal.
Do you imply any qualification like that in your statement on ‘greenhouse’ warming as ‘important’? What context do you imply b the word ‘important’?
Good example of a reasonable qualification statement about the relative effects of the CO2 contribution to the ‘greenhouse effect’ is from Prof Lindzen who said:

The following was taken from Prof Lindzen’s statement in the The Wall Street Journal, 26 June 2006. [Bold emphasis mine –JW]
“There is also little disagreement that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen from about 280 ppmv (parts per million by volume) in the 19th century to about 387 ppmv today. Finally, there has been no question whatsoever that carbon dioxide is an infrared absorber (i.e., a greenhouse gas — albeit a minor one), and its increase should theoretically contribute to warming. Indeed, if all else were kept equal, the increase in carbon dioxide should have led to somewhat more warming than has been observed, assuming that the small observed increase was in fact due to increasing carbon dioxide rather than a natural fluctuation in the climate system. Although no cause for alarm rests on this issue, there has been an intense effort to claim that the theoretically expected contribution from additional carbon dioxide has actually been detected.”

This doesn’t seem to be stopping the UNFCCC from moving forward on absurd mitigation proposals. Sadly, MSM isn’t monitoring the IPCC Solution Work Groups nor the UNFCCC to protect the public interest from the fraud.
Thanks for all your tireless work Lord Monckton, hopefully they listened will not destroy the California economy with the AB32 nonsense, Carbon Tax, and CARB proclamations .
Reference:UNFCCC Releases Parties’ Submissions on CCS under the CDM
28 March 2012:
source: http://climate-l.iisd.org/news/unfccc-releases-parties’-submissions-on-ccs-under-the-cdm/
The UNFCCC Secretariat has published the submissions from three parties on their views regarding specific aspects of the eligibility of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) projects as Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects (FCCC/SBSTA/2012/MISC.8).
Three such submissions have been received from: Denmark and the European Commission on behalf of the EU and its member States; Nauru on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS); and Pakistan.

Peter Kovachev says:
April 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
Tim Mantyla says:
April 4, 2012 at 11:04 am
@kim2ooo
Your laughter is silly here, it’s clear you fail to check the facts. It is obvious that you are no scientist either, and have no respect for science.
Tim, kim2000 is a kid. Where level-headed and investigative scientific thinking is concerned, she can wipe the floor with you.The inanity of your commentary here, which understandably made her giggle, makes this clear.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thank you! 🙂
It is true I have very little respect for Post-normal Science masquerading as Normal Science.
I have little confidence in places / people who claim one equals the other.
FOR Mr.Tim Mantyla
IPCC
“It has been labelled “post-normal” science. Climate change seems to fall in this category. Disputes in post-normal science focus…on the process of science – who gets funded, who evaluates quality, who has the ear of policy…The IPCC is a classic example of a post-normal scientific activity.”
“The danger of a “normal” reading of science is that it assumes science can first find truth, then speak truth to power, and that truth-based policy will then follow…exchanges often reduce to ones about scientific truth rather than about values, perspectives and political preferences. ” -Mike Hulmehttp://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/climate-change-and-the-death-of-science/http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/13/i-have-a-stake-in-the-outcome/http://nome.colorado.edu/HARC/Readings/Saloranta.pdf

Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 5, 2012 at 6:47 am
One of my favorites of yours….
“”In science, whatever you may personally believe or wish to be so, it is the truth and only the truth that matters.” Lord Monckton
I have it as a header 🙂
Thank you Sir…. for all your efforts

Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 5, 2012 at 6:47 am
Dr. Nahle, in the light of comments by Willis Eschenbach and others, has accepted that his attempt to demonstrate by measurement that there is no greenhouse effect was not successful,…My concern about allowing these tiresome and scientifically unsupported assertions that there is no greenhouse effect…those who try to maintain that there is no greenhouse effect are merely vexatious…My concern about allowing these tiresome and scientifically unsupported assertions that there is no greenhouse effect…Thirdly, the small and irritating group that maintain, …that there is no greenhouse effect…
===========================================
Let me tell you for the second time: neither have professor Wood and professor Nahle maintained there was no “greenhouse effect” nor was the experiment designed to prove it. Hence your argument “the experiment does not prove there is no greenhouse effect” simply misses the point.
There is an effect indeed, discovered in the 19th century: some gasses can absorb and re-emit IR radiation. However, referring to that effect some people like Arrhenius have developed certain climate theories back in the 19th century. The essential part of the theories was the idea, that the earlier discovered effect (Tyndall) causes SIGNIFICANT warming, to put it in a short and simple way.
Then professor Wood WITHOUT QUESTIONING THE PHYSICAL EFFECT decided to check, whether the warming can be significant or not. The result of his experiment is: no, it can not, the effect is extremely weak.
You are welcome to replicate the experiment properly or provide a scientific explanation of its results. Professor Wood has given one and humble me too: the air takes the energy away from the surface via contact and convection (high school level science) and thus COOLS the surface, that’s why the (relatively) cold surface does not radiate much and therefore the” trapped” IR radiation causes next to nothing. I am looking forward to your scientific arguments on this scientific issue.

Mr. Monckton, you didn’t answer my question: If AB32 is supposed to have had disastrous economic impacts on the state of California, why haven’t we seen any of those impacts in the months since AB32 has taken effect? Are you predicting that the state GDP will drop some 5% this year? (which is, after all, V&T’s projection divided by 4.)

Kim2ooo,
No need for a thank you; t’was a pleasure to deliver an electronic version of the elbow-to-the-nose to an annoying numpty. Who will break the real bad news to that generation, though? Namely that “post-normal science” isn’t science; it’s just fraud with a kool moniker. I think it’ll have to be you. You and your generation will have to mop up somehow after these ageing adolescent losers.

Steve Richards says:
April 5, 2012 at 4:01 am
It would be helpful if someone repeats Nasif S. Nahle experiments (which were a comprehensive repeat of Woods)…by injecting CO2 into the boxes to see if there was any measurable difference in temperature rise.
A temperature rise with CO2 injection , with and without the additional protective glass would be illuminating due to the masking of long wave radiation.
==========================================
Actually, there was an equal amount of CO2 in both boxes like in the air outside the boxes. The thing is, that the glass lid traps radiation in a spectrum, that includes the one of CO2, hence adding CO2 to the box with the glass lid would not help trap more radiation.
Referring to the Arrhenius’ hypothesis on “climate sensitivity” of CO2 it was sufficient to demonstrate, that a much stronger effect of glass does not produce any significant temperature rise.

This application of logic to the situation needs to be condensed into a few talking points and memorized and repeated by republican presidential candidates and anyone running for office.
You can apply the same logic to any emission reduction in the US and use the UN’s own inflated numbers against them.

In response to the “there is no greenhouse effect” crowd, the question whether there is a greenhouse effect, and even the question how big that effect is, is irrelevant to this thread, since I had made it plain in my posting that, for the sake of argument, I was accepting the IPCC’s predictions of future warming, even though I believed them to be exaggerated. Therefore, the frankly boring interventions on this subject were and are merely an attempt to hijack the threat, disrupt the discussion and discourage people from following the original argument. It is high time that the moderators shunted these wrecking crews into a separate thread of their own, out of everyone else’s way.
In response to the person who wonders what the economic effect on California will be, my original posting described just how much of California’s industry has moved out or is about to do so, with evidence, and made the not unreasonable point that AB32 would accelerate that trend.
The take-home message from this thread is:
1. Any individual proposal to mitigate CO2 emissions will only reduce the global concentration by a small fraction.
2. Therefore, there will only be a minuscule reduction in the CO2 radiative forcing.
3. Therefore, the consequent cooling would be so small that it could not be detected by even the most modern instruments or methods.
4. Therefore, even if such an individual proposal had been successful, there would be no method of measuring that it had.
5. The cost of each individual proposal that has so far been implemented has been very large in relation to the immeasurably small cooling that might be expected if the proposal actually succeeded as intended.
6. Scaling up an individual proposal to make it global also scales up the cost.
7. In CO2 mitigation, few if any economies of scale are evident,
8. Therefore, any measure to mitigate CO2, whether local, Statewide, Federal, regional, or even global, will either fail to make any appreciable difference to CO2 concentration, to radiative forcing and to warming, or cost far more than any benefit in climate-related damage abated …
9. … or both.
10. Therefore, no more senseless deployment of taxpayers’ money has yet been devised.

1. I am impressed that no serious ‘alarmist climate scientist’ is prepared to debate Monckton publically. I saw him in action at a public lecture during one of his visits to Australia. When I left the auditorium long after his lecture had ceased there was still a long queue of people anxious to speak to him personally. They were not waiting to disagree with him.
2. In his current discussion of the benefits and costs of climate modification as it applies to California (my favourite American State) Monckton again demonstrates his mastery of the subject. The analysis will/would be little different if applied to any state or country in the first or second world. I doubt that anyone would take the trouble to do the math for a third or fourth world country.
3. The problem with alarmist scientists generally appears to me to be that too many of them are narrow specialists and not enough have the broad knowledge of the subject which Monckton clearly demonstrates. He is, amongst other things, a mathematician so that he is readily able to make mincemeat of what passes for benefit/cost analysis in the alarmist climate literature.
4. Speaking as a person trained in economics, benefit/cost analysis and computer model building I must say how disappointed I am with the contributions of (British) Professor Lord Stein and (Australian) Professor Garnault to the debate about the benefits/costs of climate modification. Perhaps they should both learn some elementary climate science and then repeat benefit/cost analysis 101 and then try again.

Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 6, 2012 at 8:52 pm
“The take-home message from this thread is:…”
===============================================
I allow me to make a few remarks.
You said: “8. Therefore, any measure to mitigate CO2, whether local, Statewide, Federal, regional, or even global, will either fail to make any appreciable difference to CO2 concentration, to radiative forcing and to warming, or cost far more than any benefit in climate-related damage abated”.
First, although it looks like a logical conclusion because of use of the word “therefore”, but it is not logical. You can not derive ineffectiveness of global large scale measures from apparently low ineffectiveness of an “individual” measure. Example: a physician tells you to take 3 pills a day for 2 weeks to cure a disease and someone says: “no, do not do that, because a single pill will not cure the disease, therefore 3 pills a day for 2 weeks will not help either, just cost more”.
Second, the part “or cost far more than any benefit in climate-related damage abated” has absolutely no logical connection to your points 1-7, you have just build this claim into your conclusion. That does not mean, that the claim is false, but you need to prove it first.
And of course, it makes little sense to talk about mitigation of something, that is physically impossible.

Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 6, 2012 at 8:52 pm
In response to the “there is no greenhouse effect” crowd, the question whether there is a greenhouse effect, and even the question how big that effect is, is irrelevant to this thread, since I had made it plain in my posting that, for the sake of argument, I was accepting the IPCC’s predictions of future warming, even though I believed them to be exaggerated.
============================================
It is true, that you believe them to be exaggerated, no problem with that, you said above: “Now, given the errors, exaggerations, and failures of prediction in the IPCC’s documents, I do not for a moment think we are going to see anything like as much as 3 C° of manmade warming by 2100. Even the IPCC expects only half of that, or 1.5 C°, to occur by 2100 as a result of the CO2 that we emit in this century.”
But then you expressed your own estimation or the one of someone else’s that you believe to be correct: “Yet it is only that 1.5 C° that CO2 mitigation measures such as those in California can possibly affect to any discernible extent. That 1.5 C° is the maximum 21st-century warming that we could have prevented even if we had shut down all CO2 emissions in the year 2000. The remaining 1.5 C° – about half of it from non-CO2 greenhouse gases and half from warming already in the pipeline because of our past emissions – …”
So you do believe the CO2 causes SIGNIFICANT warming and you expressed it on this thread above (which BTW makes it quite legitimate to be challenged on this thread, too). It is understandable, that you possibly did not know anything about the professor Wood’s experiment until 2 days ago, a lot of people do not know about it either, but it has been changed now. If you look at the reality, and this is what the professor Wood’s experiment demonstrates, neither 1.5 C° nor 0.00015 C° CO2 warming is possible. Of course, you can question my “0.00015 C°”, so I’d better tell you now: this is a purely rhetorical figure to express the idea of “next to nothing”. Anyway, you are welcome to present your own or someone else’s calculations, but please not statistical ones, no, I would accept only physics. It can go like that: the boxes were very hot and produced much much more IR than our rather cold surface, the glass lid blocks very very much IR, maybe 1000-1000 000 times as much as CO2 does, and all that did not produce even a 1C° warming.
This an alibi for CO2, isn’t it?

Greg House says:
“…you are welcome to present your own or someone else’s calculations, but please not statistical ones, no, I would accept only physics.”
Then you do not accept any of Michael Mann’s papers, which rely on statistics. Unless, of course, you believe that Mann’s cherry-picked treemometers are “physics”.
Finally, you scream “SIGNIFICANT” without defining the term. Per the null hypothesis, ‘significant’ should mean exceeding past Holocene parameters. Anything less is indistinguishable from natural variability.

Smokey says:
April 7, 2012 at 6:18 pm
Then you do not accept any of Michael Mann’s papers, which rely on statistics.
=================================================
I do not quite understand, what Michael Mann’s statistics has to do with the question, whether it is PHYSICALLY possible, that the capability of certain gasses to absorb and re-emit some IR can significantly contribute to warming. Significant in sense of “worth talking about”. 0.00000001 degree is certainly not worth talking about, is it?
And I am not screaming, when I am writing PHYSICALLY, it is merely a way to emphasise an important point.

To the “no-greenhouse-effect” troll, I reply that my calculations are based on the IPCC’s implicit central estimate that the warming by 2100 as a result of the CO2 we emit this century will be 1.5 K. I did not warrant that the IPCC’s prediction was accurate: but I was prepared to base my calculations upon it precisely because doing so removes any argument that I have underestimated the amount of warming that may occur. It also removes any legitimacy from attempts by the “no-greenhouse-effect” trolls to derail this thread by arguing that there is no greenhouse effect. My calculations are based on the IPCC’s assumptions, which include the assumption that there is a greenhouse effect and that, accordingly, some warming will result as we add CO2 to the atmosphere. This particular posting, therefore, was not and is not an appropriate place to maunder on about whether or not there is a greenhouse effect. Even if one assumes that there is a greenhouse effect, it is clear from my calculations that it is many times more expensive to attempt CO2 mitigation than to pay the cost of any warming that may arise. If there be no greenhouse effect, then my principal conclusion is true a fortiori.

Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 7, 2012 at 9:20 pm
To the “no-greenhouse-effect” troll, I reply… “no-greenhouse-effect” trolls to derail this thread by arguing that there is no greenhouse effect…maunder on about whether or not there is a greenhouse effect…
=========================================
Let me please say it for the third time on this thread, and this time hopefully to your ultimate satisfaction, that there is indeed an effect, discovered in the 19th century. Yes, CO2 and some other gasses are indeed capable of absorbing and re-emitting some IR radiation. This effect was later called “greenhouse effect” by people, who did not bother to check, whether this effect can cause a significant warming.
I do not really care about your calling me a “troll” and distorting my argumentation. I do understand, that it might be painful to learn about the Wood’s experiment and the physical impossibility of any significant warming by “greenhouse gasses”. Maybe you need some time to adjust to this new reality and I do hope, that sooner or later you will incorporate this new knowledge in your brilliant presentations. At least I hope that you might stop telling people things like “yes, there is worming and yes, we are partly to blame”, because it is a scientifically and even politically and strategically wrong, even if you add “but this is not that bad”.

It is effective to ‘accept for the sake of argument’, but dangerous to persist with it too long. Having first demonstrated the inconsistency and illogic of the opponents’ position, it is then important to turn urgently to breaking down the false assumptions that one temporarily ‘granted’.
In this case, discrediting utterly the proposal to mitigate CO2 forcing by global fiat is crucial, and indeed paramount. But it is not the only issue; getting science off the track of pandering to paymasters is a close second in importance. Some would say that “getting the (climate) science right” is actually more critical than both, but in the real world there will/would be no freedom or opportunity to do so unless the first two (political) issues are resolved. They’re intertwined, in any case, as getting the ‘climate science’ to be at the very least honest about its limitations is necessary to discrediting mitigation and sealing the financial artery presently open in global science funding, pre-empted and abused by ‘climatology’.

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